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Global Awareness Week: Jessi Cruickshank On School-Life Balance

As part of Global Awareness Week, celebrity speaker Jessi Cruickshank ventured to MacEwan University to give the students a keynote on striking a school-life balance and fulfilling their potential. (Another Lavin speaker, Shalini Kantayya, also spoke during that week.) The event was organized to spread awareness about the important issues and injustices taking place internationally, and to celebrate diversity and multiculturalism. Sharing lessons learned from her time in university and in her professional career, Cruickshank promoted the importance of stepping outside the classroom to make positive changes in the community and the world as a whole.

"You are the passionate, the motivators, the change-making generation," she told the students, "and you make the choice to make a difference." Cruickshank said she made that choice after working as an ambassador for Free The Children. A trip to India was what set the wheels in motion, she explained, and from then on her eyes were opened to the issues facing people in the developing world. Now, she advocates for young people to step up and get involved in projects that expand beyond their syllabus.

She reminds her audiences that they have the power to make a difference and that everyone has the potential to do good in the world. "Everything positive that you put out in the world, from volunteering, to getting involved in your university, to standing up for the things you believe in, will come back to you," she said in her talk. "Because at the end of the day, no matter what anyone tells you, you’re the only person who holds the key to your future, and you hold the power to become anything that you believe." Despite making a name for herself as the host of MTV Canada's The Hills After Show, Cruickshank says it's important to step outside of the pop-culture bubble from time to time. There's more to life than glitz, glamor, and gossip—and Cruickshank shares this message with a generation in her highly regarded talks.